Fellowships and Other Financial Support Opportunities

Departmental Support

Caleb Smith Memorial Fellowship

The prestigious Caleb Smith Memorial Fellowship is awarded to an outstanding MA student whose thesis project incorporates photography, video, and/or websites either to conceptualize the thesis or to elucidate it in innovative ways. Projects may include travel to sites or performances for primary photo documentation, architectural or site plan visualization, and other kinds of primary documentation, website development, and/or other digital humanities projects.

The Caleb Smith Memorial Fellowship is named after Caleb Smith, who served as the Director of the Media Center of Art History from 2009 until his untimely passing in February 2013. The fellowship recipient(s) will be known as the Caleb Smith Memorial Fellow(s). All second-year MA in Art History and MODA students in the Department of Art History and Archaeology are eligible to apply as long as they are in good academic standing and have no pending Incompletes by the time of application.

Past recipients:
Marina Rastorfer, “Provenance Research and The Many Chasms: The Case of Gurlitt, An Ongoing Search” (2019-2020)
Jean Wong, “Resisting Isolation and Building Community in Postwar Singapore— A Critical Study of Infrastructure, Surveillance Technology, and Educational Institutions in Ho Rui An’ DASH” (2019-2020)
Mo Zhang, “Visual and Poetic Imagination in The Four Seasons, a Ming Dynasty Handscroll in the Metropolitan Museum of Art” (2018-2019)
Sarah Bigler, “A Turn-of-the-Century Tastemaker: Frederick Keppel and American Print Collecting” (2017-2018)
Jeffrey Paul, “Printing Poetics: Wade Guyton’s Index of Translation” (2017-2018)
Roma Patel: “Looking for Ourselves: Gauri Gill’s The Americans, 2000-2007” (2023-2024)

MA Thesis Research Fellowship

MA in Art History students in their first year or beyond are eligible to apply for a thesis research fellowship, provided that they plan to register for the MA thesis course in the semester that immediately follows their application. The fellowship is typically intended for travel related to thesis research, within or outside the United States.

Past recipients:

Yaying Bai, “(Mis) behavior of Children in the Floating World” (2022-2023)
Ariadne Diogenous, “Bound By History: Cypriot Identity in Twentieth-Century Hotel Architecture” (2022-2023)
Marlis Flinn, “Mildred Anne Butler: Politics and Gender in the Irish Countryside” (2022-2023)
Ying Su, “Reconsidering Cultural Dichotomy: Xu Bung’s Background Story in an Open Tradition” (2022-2023) 
Sophia Gebara, “A Region of Blankets: Reweaving the Muisca Manta in Nuevo Reino de Granada” (2021-2022)
Abbe Klein, “Lessons from Loheland: Vernacular Architecture and Self-Realization in Interwar Germany” (2021-2022)
Colton Klein, “The Turpentine State: An Ecology of Painting in Minnie Evans’ Airlie Oak” (2021-2022)
Marie Bouichou, “Festivals of the French Nation in Rome under Louis XV” (2019-2020)
On Tsun Fung, “The Politics of Plants and Obaku Zen: Kakutei Jōkō’s (1722-85) Flowers and Plants of the Four Seasons” (2019-2020)
Sarah Jane Kim, “Materializing a Legacy: The Posthumous Restrikes of Édouard Manet’s Etchings” (2019-2020)
Mo Zhang, “Visual and Poetic Imagination in The Four Seasons, a Ming Dynasty Handscroll in the Metropolitan Museum of Art” (2018-2019)
Sophia Dime: “Tortured Bodies in Simon of Trent’s Iconography” (2023-2024)

MA Language Fellowship

MA in Art History students in their first year or beyond are eligible to apply for a Summer language fellowship, provided that they are in good academic standing and have no pending Incompletes by the time of application. The fellowship is intended to cover tuition/costs associated with a Summer language program or another form of language learning.

Past recipients:
Yuchen Jiao, Japanese language program, Summer 2022
Andie Fialkoff, German and French language programs, Summer 2021
On Tsun Fung, Japanese language program, Summer 2019
Sarah Jane Kim, Italian language program, Summer 2019
Ava Mira Robles, Latin language program, Summer 2023
Elizabeth Wickersham, German language program, Summer 2023

MA in Art History Presents Curatorial Assistantship

Past curatorial assistants:
Marlis Flinn, Kristin Toms, Contact: Community and Collaboration Across Five Centuries of Printmaking, Summer 2022
Sarah Faulkner, Ana-Sofia Meneses and Nínive Vargas de la Peña, From Life: Early Works by Florine Stettheimer, Summer 2020
Sydney Sheehan, MA in Art History Presents: Clodion (1738-1814) and ‘Clodion Mania’ in Nineteenth-Century France, Summer 2019
Cydney Williams, MA in Art History Presents: Looking East: James Justinian Morier and Nineteenth-Century Persia, Summer 2018
Ava Mira Robles, Charlotte Santo Domingo, and Lucie Schwartz, MA in Art History Presents: The Inquiring Eye. European Drawings from the Lola Szladits Collection, Summer 2023

GSAS support

MA Research Matching Funds
https://gsas.columbia.edu/student-guide/financing-your-education/ma-research-matching-funds

GSAS Master’s SynThesis Competition
https://gsas.columbia.edu/graduate-life/career-development/gsas-masters-synthesis-competition

GSAS resources regarding external support
https://gsas.columbia.edu/student-guide/financing-your-education/external-fellowships
https://gsas.columbia.edu/student-guide/financing-your-education/upcoming-fellowship-and-award-opportunities

Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship - General Information
Academic Year: https://gsas.columbia.edu/student-guide/financing-your-education/flas-fellowship-academic-year
Summer: https://gsas.columbia.edu/student-guide/financing-your-education/flas-fellowship-summer

In addition, please refer to the following websites for internal deadlines:

Middle East Institute, Columbia University:
https://www.mei.columbia.edu/flas-fellowships

South Asia Institute, Columbia University:
https://sai.columbia.edu

Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University:
https://weai.columbia.edu

Federal Work-Study Program

https://www.sfs.columbia.edu/content/work-study-overview

GSAS Student Guide to Financing your Education

https://gsas.columbia.edu/student-guide/financing-your-education